Saving the World, the World of Warcraft
Introduction The Great Faction Debate (Interpretative Disputes) Since the beginning of World of Warcraft, two factions: the [http://www.wowpedia.org/Alliance| Alliance] and [http://www.wowpedia.org/Horde| Horde] were forced to hate and enforce war upon ear other. The battle has lasted over 4, soon to be 5 expansions. (REF) Before you can begin to save or destroy [http://www.wowpedia.org/Azeroth_%28world%29| Azeroth], you must choose a faction to play. By choosing a faction, you swear to fight for your allegiance until death. '''Horde or Alliance?''' Do you choose to fight for the Horde? "King Varian...you wish to make war on my people?! You shall have your war, human! You will see the fury of the Horde rage through your cities! You will see your throne split in two! THIS I SWEAR!!" -Thrall, Warchief of the Horde (ref) Or do you choose to fight for the Alliance? "I was away for too long. My absence cost us the lives of some of our greatest heroes. Trash like you and that evil witch were allowed to roam free, unchecked. The time has come to make things right. To disband your treacherous kingdom of murderers and thieves. Putress was the first strike. Many more will come." -Varian, High King of the Alliance (ref) One of, if not the biggest debate over WoW, is which side to choose. I personally chose the Alliance faction because of the thought of being the ‘good’ guy and saving the World of Warcraft from the Horde. But really, it’s what race you want to play. As of now each race have 6 playable races that range from Humans to Worgans for the Alliance and Orc to Blood Elf for the Horde. The biggest flaw in this debate is that new users do not understand the lore of the story, so they don’t understand which faction is suppose to be good or bad. I acknowledge that when I first started playing WoW, I chose the Alliance because I believed they were better, they were good. But are they really the better faction? This leads into the next ongoing debate in the WoW community. '''Good? Evil? Or both?''' For over tens years this debate has taken place until just recently. My reasons for choosing the faction that I chose were the good guy aspect that the Alliance had going for it. But can you really consider the Alliance the good guys? Both factions can be good in a way. The debate that has been the center of debate for the last two expansions is whether you can consider one faction to be good and the other to be bad or both. For example, user Selenir said: “Anyone who thinks of the Alliance as "good" and the Horde as "evil" has paid no attention to any of the lore throughout the entire game. Each faction has its own distinct values. The Alliance believes the Horde to be wholly evil and brutally violent, but the Horde shows far more emphasis on honor and courage than does the Alliance.” (ref) Selenir response is like most that I found. Near the beginning it was thought that the Alliance was good and the Horde was bad. But throughout each expansion, a greater story is discussed and by the 3rd expansion: [http://www.wowpedia.org/World_of_Warcraft:_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King| The Wrath of the Lich King], the two factions join up to fight a greater evil. This causes a treaty to form, which will be broken in the upcoming expansion. This leads to a mass war that puts Alliance versus Horde again. The lore of the story created by Blizzard, depicts both factions to be good and evil in their own ways. But this debate will continue for the time that this game exists seeing as it will never have a correct answer. Remediation Word of Warcraft is the most popular MMO game on the market and has been for over ten years. It has accumulated over 10 million subscribers during that time period. (WIKI REF) WoW has generated a substantial amount of fan fiction ranging from fan made videos to art to stories all created by fans of the game. The video game itself leaves a lot of room for user creation and interpretation. One of the most general forms of remediation is the use or creation of work that is developed through the use of incorporating older media. Fan’s all across the world play WoW and use it to create works of art from what they experience in the game. Fan Films Fan created videos are a way for many users to interact with multiple of topic s. WoW is just one of many examples of entertainment where people create remediation. The example to the right, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPeKtN9OeOA| Beyond The Real Life], is a fan made movie that follows a story of a user who get’s saved by a women priest and they fall in love. The movie is a parody of WoW that uses the games characters, lore, and mechanics to create a tie between the real world and in-game worlds. This video also includes references to lost and includes music from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings_film_trilogy| LOTR]. This is just one of many feature length movies that are created around WoW that are considered a form of remediation. In the World of Warcraft, a user creates a character on either the Alliance or Horde and levels it from 1-85. They do this by completing quests, partaking in dungeons and raids, and entering battlegrounds against the opposing faction. Many fans like to act this process out in real life and create videos to show their love of the genre. [http://www.herculeanproductions.com/index.php| Herculean Productions] is a fan made site from a group of WoW players that decided to create videos reenacting elements from the game. There’s one series that I would like to pay close attention too: [http://www.herculeanproductions.com/movie.php?mid=3|The Chronicles of Leeroy]. For some people who have never played WoW before, the name for this video series comes from one of the most popular WoW videos on the Internet called [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU| Leeroy Jenkins]. Now let’s get back to the Herculean Productions series called Leeroy. I attached one of my favorite episodes to the left as an example. This is a prime example of remediation. This video includes numerous elements from the game such as abilities, terms, ‘sayings’, reference, etc. It also includes media from the famous Leeroy Jenkins video that was posted earlier. WoW has such a large subscriber total that thousands of players create forms of media that imitate some sort of the game everyday. This one series in particular has 10 episodes that portray a users journey from level 1 to max level 85. But there are others like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8zROTDb07I| Survivor: Stranglethorn Vale] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89gfen37Dhs| The Hunt] which our online series centered around WoW. Survivor: Stranglethorn Vale is created by a well know company called [http://www.machinima.com/| Machinima] (Creators of the Red vs Blue Halo series). Stranglethorn Vale is a series based off of the famous show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_%28TV_series%29| Survivor] which puts 16 user created characters against each in a team based game until there is only one left at the end of the series. Often in forms of remediation, older types of media are present within them. This is another example as it ties WoW together with the theme from Survivor. Fan Art Another source of remediation common in today’s world is the use of art created by fans to depict their interpretation of their form of genre. Since World of Warcraft has millions of user, there is a substantial amount of fan-generated art on the Internet within the WoW community. Art is different from most forms of remediation. A user is recreating what happens within the game in an art form without trying to explain what is happening throughout the story. Art is just what the author imagines what is happening. There are plenty of sites on the Internet that allow users to get together with other artists and connect using their art. For World of Warcraft, I found the most popular sites to be WoW forums, [http://www.deviantart.com/| Deviant Art], Tumblr, and Fanpop. The general communities that are available allow for this form of expression to reach thousands and show that remediation has influences in art. Below are 3 different pieces of art that I thought expressed very cool aspects of WoW. Considering that I have a passion for the game, I tired to find some pieces of art that also tied into my personal feelings of the game. WoW2.jpg|Lich King By: Charismatic-Curse WoW1.jpg|Invincible Death By: breathing2004 WoW3.jpg|Dawn of the Rogues by Eric Azagury (Belgique) Each of these photos represent a medium with the game itself. Each represent a major character in the story line that is a major factor in WoW. The Lich king, Arthas, and my favorite playable character, a rouge. These photos a users form of remediation through art. Each dipict a major factor in WoW through there own eyes, containing elements of past and persent forms of WoW. Knowledge Communities Links & Resources References